DELRAY BEACH, U.S — Ernests “The Gull” Gulbis will be trying Saturday evening to make amends for last week’s semifinal exit by attempting to go one step further.

Gulbis has come into some of his most consistent form in recent memory to book his second semifinal placing in less than a fortnight. His opponent will be fellow unseeded player, Jarkko Nieminen of Finland. Gulbis will not be fooled by his opponent’s current 109 world-ranking, well aware of the fact that Nieminen is a former top 20 player and that the drop has little to do with his tennis skill but rather a wrist injury that plagued him last season.

To get to the semi, Gulbis had to first overcome Argentine Leonardo Mayer. For the second game in a row, it looked as if his opponent had played his big game a day previous, having knocked out fifth seed Florian Mayer of Germany to make it through to the quarters. In the opening set, both players were able to break the other once, before the set was forced to a tiebreaker. Gulbis continued to ride his good fortune in tiebreakers, seeing off Mayer to win the first set 7-6 (2).

In the second set, Gulbis threatened to break Mayer’s serve on four occasions. He was only able to achieve it on one of the four occasions but with his serve holding steady at the other end of the court, it was enough to see him take the set and the game 7-6 (2), 6-4.

With the Argentine currently ranked one place above Gulbis in the world rankings (71), Gulbis should again see a steady rise in his rankings this week, after rocketing up 27 places last week.